Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

Hypotheses are scaffoldings erected in front of a building and then dismantled when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the workman; but you mustn't mistake the scaffolding for the building.

A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

A thinking man's greatest happiness is to have fathomed what can be fathomed and to revere in silence what cannot be fathomed.

You often say to yourself in the course of your life that you ought to avoid having too much business, 'polypragmosyne' [incessant activity], and, more especially, that the older you get, the more you ought to avoid entering on new business. But it's all very well saying this, and giving yourself andothers good advice. The very fact of growing older means taking up a new business; all our circumstances change, and we must either stop doing anything at all or else willing and consciously take on the new role we have to play on life's stage.

Everything that liberates our mind without at the same time imparting self-control is pernicious.

Behaviour is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.

The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.

This is why we may say that those who parade piety as a purpose and an aim mostly turn into hypocrites

You really only know when you know little. Doubt grows with knowledge.

There's nothing clever that hasn't been thought of before — you've just got to try to think it all over again.

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.